


reputation

by smithens



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Awkward Tension, Badly Expressed Concern, Bickering, Co-workers, Gen, Homophobia, Light Angst, Strained Friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21971530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: "Don't play the innocent, Mr Ellis, there are eyes everywhere in that house."
Relationships: Implied/Referenced Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis, Richard Ellis & Miss Lawton
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	reputation

**Author's Note:**

> mind the tags.

To his chagrin, he begins nodding off the moment he's in the car.

The chauffeur hasn't even started the damn engine yet.

"Someone had a night," says Miss Lawton. The woman's curt, but far as he can tell, she's also one to talk, given the sallow look to her face, the beginnings of lavender half-circles under her eyes. She holds the handle of her bag so loosely it looks as though it'll fall out of her lap at any moment… 

Holds it with light fingers, one might say. 

He wonders what she nicked this time.

"That ye be not judged," he replies, only just managing to mask his annoyance. "You're hardly Little Briar Rose this morning, yourself, Miss Lawton."

The car starts.

She scowls. "Always one for _fairy_ tales, aren't you, Mr Ellis."

Christ, he's too exhausted for this. 

Ellis presses his lips together, turns his hat over in his hands, lays his head back and squeezes his aching eyes shut. He's going to be magnanimous, he tells himself. He can manage that; he has it in him, seeing as this morning was the best he'd had in years.

Seeing as last night was the best he'd had in years. He and Mr Barrow (Thomas, he reminds himself) may have had a rough go of it in the middle, there, but things certainly turned out in his favour by the end of it. Thank Heavens the man turned out to be more naive than negligent… he can't exactly afford to excuse the latter. 

Although he might have, frankly. He'd fallen hard enough for it, even used his own damn name to get him out of jail, which might have been the most reckless thing he's done all year.

If well worth it.

He'd never have been able to forgive himself, otherwise. Frankly, he already feels at fault about the other two dozen men rotting back there, and he was hardly responsible for _their_ being out on the town in York.

One chance was all he'd been given.

_I hope we can keep in touch._

As if he was ever going to let him get away, after all the trouble he'd gone to in keeping him from harm.

"Don't you work today, Miss Lawton?" 

She sniffs. 

"Am I to be sorry that Her Majesty finds my services to be of more use – "

"Careful, now," he says. "Fatigue hardly makes for steady hands, and you'd not be the first to be dismissed for pricking a finger."

Might as well continue the damn reference, if she's already played the queer card over it. No holds barred, give no quarter — they're on a hiding to nothing, the two of them; if one of them goes down, they both do. 

And it's hardly a far-fetched suggestion. If he recalls correctly, her predecessor lost the position for dripping blood on a silk evening gown. The Royal Household is ruthless, when it comes down to it.

" _You'd_ be the first to be dismissed for – "

"What in God's name has gotten into you?" Ellis hisses. He straightens up, opens his eyes to glare at her.

It has no effect. She's staring out the window, gazing at the house as it shrinks behind them.

Exhaustion isn't an excuse for implying what he thinks she is.

"I haven't slept since yesterday," she says eventually, in that careful tone of hers, haughty. It always makes him worry he ought to be walking on eggshells, though he's gotten over showing it, in the years he's known her.

"Accommodations weren't exactly to standard," he says, dismissive.

Not that he spent much time in his own room last night.

Lawton hums. "I was in the servants' hall until five o'clock."

His heart drops into his stomach.

"Sewing."

"Why," he says, and it was meant to sound like a question, but it doesn't, so he adds, cold, clipped, and close to home, "in't that diligent."

She turns her head forward, and he can tell she's looking at him out of the corners of her eyes.

"I don't suppose I can say the same for you."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Miss Lawton."

"Don't play the innocent, Mr Ellis."

Ellis huffs, but before he can say anything, she says, saccharine, "there are eyes everywhere in that house."

Judging only by tone, he's not sure how she means it, whether it's a threat or something else, but it's confirmation enough of what he's been dreading.

His mouth has gone dry. They've left the grounds of the Abbey, now; they're passing through farmland.

He wishes the driver would speed up a bit; they can't be going more than ten miles an hour.

"Eyes everywhere at Buckingham Palace," he returns, steadfastly not looking at her.

"Nothing to _see_ at Buckingham Palace."

God, he's done it, hasn't he.

"What on Earth were you thinking," she adds, and the mere flicker of worry in her voice is enough to give him pause. "It must have been three in the morning when you – "

Indiscreetly kissed Thomas Barrow in the downstairs passage and then went up to bed with him, yes, he knows.

"Lawton," he interrupts, determined if whispering, because there's only so much a panel of glass between them and the driver and _Mr Wilson_ can actually do, "I don't suppose you're leaving Downton Abbey with more than you arrived with."

She coughs, and mutters again, "eyes everywhere in that house."

He raises his eyebrows.

"That's a first."

"You're not the only one of us who had an unfortunate lapse in discretion."

She says it like he shags the butler at every house they go to.

" – and Mrs Bates was _ever_ so concerned for Her Majesty's reputation."

"Well, she hardly had reason to be concerned for your own."

Ellis feels her glare at him.

It may not be the moral she wants him to take from this story, but his fears are lessened by the name of a woman who can corroborate any story he needs to tell.

They're in the village now.

If they don't resolve this soon…

"I imagine you're keen to preserve _yours,_ " she retorts.

"Are you _threatening_ me, Miss Lawton?"

"No."

He takes a deep breath, refrains from saying, _you simply take pleasure in terrifying me, then,_ because that can't be it. She's hard-hearted, not malicious.

"Why – "

"I'm telling you to be careful," she spits, but she's suddenly grave, almost pleading. "They've already shown what they're capable of, at Downton."

And he was a part of it, wasn't he.

Still… 

"Thank you for your concern," he says, perhaps more flippantly than the situation calls for.

It's all he can do — his heart may be pounding, but what option does he have in this moment if she's right? He's not going to be in Yorkshire again for months; this isn't the sort of thing he can put in a letter to Thomas.

This isn't the sort of thing he'd dare put into writing at all.

"If petty theft by the Royal Household would make the papers," she starts, reading his damn mind, and the mere thought of that is enough for him to feel terribly, horribly ill.

But the car's stopped; they're at the station.

He puts his hat back on and lets himself out, stares at her.

"We'll discuss this tomorrow," he says, blithe; there are plenty around to overhear, now, and he can't afford to give the right impression. "Mind yourself at Harewood."

She nods, a disdainful twist in her lip; he turns and shuts the door, at a loss.

And then he sleeps the whole way to London.

**Author's Note:**

> find me as [@combeferre on tumblr](https://combeferre.tumblr.com/)


End file.
